A variety of manufacturing operations are presently in use by which vast quantities of small torroidal or ring-shaped articles are produced in bulk quantities. Typical of such processes is the manufacture of O-ring type seals which are of a variety of sizes and materials. Conventionally, such O-ring seals are produced in multiple cavity molds and are ejected from the mold after the completion of each molding cycle into a suitable storage hopper or bin. Such O-rings or like products are usually subjected to further processing to remove any flash which can conveniently be achieved in bulk form. Further materials handling of such small parts as required during inspection, labeling or coding such as by applying a color coding thereto, and ultimate packaging for shipment usually requires the O-rings or parts to be stacked to facilitate further handling.
It has heretofore been commonplace to manually sort and stack such small parts which comprises a tedious, time consuming and labor intensive operation. The apparatus and method of the present invention overcomes the problems associated with prior art manual material handling techniques of such small ring shaped parts by effecting an automatic collection and stacking of such parts in proper oriented relationship providing for improved efficiency and increased economy over techniques and devices heretofore known. The apparatus and method of the present invention is also adaptable for simultaneously effecting a sorting of a mixture of similar articles of different sizes.